I’ve Got You

Epilogue

Six and a half months later

Above, the sun glared through the clouds. The water sparkled beneath, tucked between Miami Beach and the main shore. Aleshia Lovell tapped away on her laptop, angled in a way so she could watch Ezra out of the corner of her eyes, and enjoy the heat of the summer.

The balcony itself was secure enough to prevent a small, hyperactive baby from accidentally turning into a tomato stain, as the barrier reached over a meter high, but Aleshia worked inside with the doors locked shut. Ezra, donning a blue and white shirt and a bulging, freshly changed nappy, was making babbling noises and crawling slowly towards a large, fluffy bear. Ezra had figured out his new form of locomotion four days prior, and focused on taking full advantage of it. He found if he placed his palms flat, and kicked his legs, he could shift along the wooden floor.

He needed feeding less frequently, slept long hours, and enjoyed trying to babble at Aleshia and Cameron, though he had not yet formed any coherent words. Vaneese and Gail both confirmed to Aleshia the words were coming. Vaneese had even thoughtfully bought her sister some earplugs for when the dreaded times of screaming and repeating words became the dominant thing in Aleshia’s life. After all, Aleshia worked at home. She wasn’t going to be escaping Ezra’s company any time soon.

She didn’t mind, though. The drooling, squeaking baby had wormed his way into her heart, and it felt good, to actively care and look after another human being. She was no longer number one. Ezra, helpless and reliant on his mother, had overtaken that position.

Cameron Lovell burst through the door of their home, carrying two bags of shopping from his trip back from work. She heard him scraping his sandals off in the entrance corridor, and bustle into the living room, spotting Ezra raking the teddy bear towards himself. “Hey, honey. I see we’re going to be tripping over the rug-rat soon.” He piled the bags on the kitchen surfaces, and Aleshia rose out of her chair to greet him with a quick peck on the cheek. A diamond ring glinted on her left hand, along with a golden band with a looping figure eight pattern. Cameron wore a matching band, and he quickly scooped Aleshia into a warm hug.

“Vaneese tells me that Amy started crawling actively at nine months – though she did a lot of rolling on her tummy before then, sometimes pulling things close. Maybe he’s going to be a genius.”

“Or an Olympian athlete,” Cameron said, grinning. “He’s certainly becoming more alert now.”

They both watched as Ezra, drawn to Cameron’s voice, had started his slow, snail crawl to his father. He resembled a sort of wriggling fish as he persisted. Aleshia helped unload the chilled ingredients into the fridge and freezer respectively, whilst Cameron sorted out the cupboards. The food was nothing imaginative – neither parent had particularly good cooking skills, but they were trying to learn. To try and be more productive, and not just live on take-outs and Vaneese’s cooking.

“How was work today?” Aleshia scrunched up the shopping bags and placed them into a single cloth bag, which contained up to thirty others, all squished in. It made a loud rustling sound that startled Ezra – he fixated huge, unblinking eyes on the commotion, before resuming his glacial crawl toward Cameron.

“Could be better, could be worse,” Cameron said, taking out the stale, half-eaten slices of white from the bread-bin and throwing it in the trash, “The man who designed this house has completed another, and it’s in our company to be sold. He’s gone for something that looks like a church on the outside, with the steeples – but with a hi-tech futuristic aura inside. It’s impressive. He asked about you.”

“He did?” Aleshia watched as Ezra finally reached Cameron, and began tugging at his legs, fussing, until Cameron picked him up.

“Yeah. He likes to know what kinds of people choose his houses. I said you were a writer and that you wrote amazing poems. He wants you to write him one about the house.”

Aleshia laughed. “Consider it done.”

They sat around the table where Aleshia worked amiably. Cameron scrolled through news articles on his phone, checking how the presidential campaign was going. Both he and Aleshia thought the debates that raged across television and sprung up by numerous concerned celebrity writers were a farce, and that the sides should stop trying to cripple one another and work together on concentrating on what America needed the most.

In return, Aleshia removed herself from the sphere of politics, but enjoyed some of the discussions Cameron brought up. Her wide adventures on the internet led her to a variety of sites. Her current favorite thing to do was browse the platforms 9gag or Imgur, where people shared stories or displayed funny pictures. She’d taken to linking some of the pictures to Cameron at work, and he took the time to send her one back in his free breaks. The current one on their Facebook messages showed a cat on a table glaring at the camera, before it deliberately knocked off a glass of water.

Aleshia stared at the man before her, holding a gurgling Ezra in one arm as he scrolled, and smiled at the sheer luck her life had given her. Seven months since she had given birth. Gail returned to Minnesota shortly after post-partum, and came for a month trip when Ezra turned three months – just before Aleshia’s wedding. She helped pass invaluable wisdom, along with Vaneese. Amy loved coming over to see her cousin, and insisted on calling him “Erzie.”

In the arrangements for the small wedding affair they had, they registered in a small chapel in southern Miami, with a miniscule audience. Meeting Cameron’s parents a month before had been nerve wracking, and seeing them in the chapel, along with two sets of grandparents, contrasting with her mother, Vaneese, and Dijon, Aleshia realized how small her family was. She didn’t have aunts or uncles, or any living grandparents. All the family consisted of was her mother, sister with husband and child, and Cameron.

Cameron’s father, David, kept a careful, blank face when talking to Aleshia, betraying nothing of the thoughts or disapproval he might have held within. Breaking with tradition, Aleshia’s mother led her daughter up the aisle. Aleshia wanted to invite her friend from Minnesota, but had not spoken in depth to the friend since her run out state to Miami. Besides, Anna also still spoke to Peter, and Aleshia did not want Peter to get a whiff of her current position in life. If he knew she had married someone less than a year after breaking up with him, there would be murder.